As photovoltaic solar cell technology is adopted as an energy generation solution on an increasingly widespread scale, fabrication and efficiency improvements relating to solar cell efficiency, metallization, material consumption, and fabrication are required. Manufacturing cost and conversion efficiency factors are driving solar cell absorbers ever thinner in thickness and larger in area, thus, increasing the mechanical fragility, efficiency, and complicating processing and handling of these thin absorber based solar cells—fragility effects increased particularly with respect to crystalline silicon absorbers.
Achieving high cell and module efficiencies in conjunction with a low fabrication cost is critical in solar cell development and manufacturing. Effective solar cell processing and structures emphasizing material and manufacturability considerations such as through-put and reliability while maintaining and/or improving solar cell structural designs and processing methods are gaining increasing importance for the widespread manufacture and adoption of solar energy generation.
Generally, solar cell base and emitter formation generally involves doping of a solar cell substrate (e.g., n type or p type) to form a pattern of base and emitter regions for corresponding contact metallization. Various known semiconductor solar cell substrate processing structures and methods exist for a combination of layer formation, doping, patterning, etc. required for solar cell base and emitter formation. These structures and methods may include for example a combination of lithography, etch, and/or diffusion, processing, etc.
However, often these traditional structures and methods may suffer from material and fabrication complexities and challenges, particularly related to cell structure and through-put and processing efficiency, as well as challenges limiting their applicability to leading edge solar cell designs.